DIOGENES: In Search Of An Honest Politician!

DIOGENES invites you to pull up a chair on this rainy day and read
posts from around the world.
The writing may lean to the right...but that's the way Diogenes wants it!
You may leave your opinion,
but Diogenes rarely changes his! WELCOME!

Saturday, February 6, 2016

Obamacare: 2016 sticker shock!

Washington Examiner ^| June 2, 2015 | Paige Winfield Cunningham Health insurers are proposing to raise Obamacare rates more than in the past - some by more than 70 percent - now that they are finally equipped with all the information they need to price those plans.

Plans wanting to raise rates by at least 10 percent next year posted the proposed increase online Monday, as required by the 2010 healthcare law. Insurers are allowed to raise rates each year, but they must publish significant increases ahead of time.
Insurers have sold plans in the law's new insurance marketplaces for two years in a row. But the difference in 2016 is that for the first time, they have a full year of claims data from enrollees that tells them how high or low to set the price tag.
'This is the first time that insurers have access to a full year of claims under the (Affordable Care Act) in order to project premiums,' Kaiser Family Foundation analysts Larry Levitt, Gary Claxton and Cynthia Cox wrote in a blog post Monday.

In Iowa Cruz Fared Better Than Rubio Or Trump With Young And Blue Collar Voters

Gee, I thought we shouldn't vote for Ted Cruz in the Republican primary because he's an icky conservative who can't appeal to young and blue collar voters. If that's the case, why did he do better than Donald Trump and Marco Rubio with both groups?

According to entrance polling, among the roughly half of all Republican voters without a college degree, Cruz won 30 percent of the vote, eclipsing Trump's 28 percent. Marco Rubio was a distant third, winning the support of just 17 percent of voters without college degrees. Cruz did 5 points better among voters without college degrees than among college grads (30 percent to 25 percent), while, among all candidates included in the entrance polling (Cruz, Trump, Rubio, Ben Carson, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders), Rubio was the candidate who had the lowest portion of his support come from those without college degrees--he did 10 points worse among voters without college degrees than among college grads (17 to 27 percent).
According to the entrance polling, Cruz also fared better than Trump or Rubio among younger voters. Among voters under the age of 30, Cruz won 26 percent of the vote to Rubio's 23 percent and Trump's 20 percent. Among voters in their 30s and early 40s, Cruz won 30 percent of the vote to Trump's 23 percent and Rubio's 21 percent. (Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton got clobbered among younger voters, winning less than 30 percent of the vote among those under the age of 45.)
Cruz's strong numbers among blue-collar voters lend credence to his expressed determination, emphasized in his victory speech, to win Reagan Democrats back into the Republican fold.(Read More)

Hillary Clinton used misleading language in Thursday night's Democratic debate to describe the ongoing FBI investigation into her use of a private email server to conduct official government business while she was secretary of state, according to former senior FBI agents.
In the New Hampshire debate with Senator Bernie Sanders, which aired on MSNBC, Clinton told moderator Chuck Todd that nothing would come of the FBI probe, "I am 100 percent confident. This is a security review that was requested. It is being carried out."
Not true says Steve Pomerantz, who spent 28 years at the FBI, and rose from field investigative special agent to the rank of assistant director, the third highest position in the Bureau.
"They (the FBI) do not do security reviews," Pomerantz said. "What they primarily do and what they are clearly doing in this instance is a criminal investigation."
Pomerantz emphasized to Fox News, "There is no mechanism for her to be briefed and to have information about the conduct, the substance, the direction or the result of any FBI investigation."
Separately, an intelligence source familiar with the two prongs of the ongoing FBI probe, stressed to Fox that the criminal and national security elements remain "inseparable." The source, not authorized to speak on the record, characterized Clinton's statement "as a typical Clinton diversion... and what is she going to say, "I'm 95 percent sure that I am going to get away with it?"
Fox recently learned that one of the FBI's senior agents responsible for counterintelligence matters, Charles H. Kable IV, is working the Clinton case, another indicator the intelligence source said that the FBI probe is "extremely serious, and the A-team is handling."

Worried about Clinton, Biden Backer mulls another push for Biden!

Panic among some Democrats about Hillary Clinton running into trouble with Bernie Sanders is spreading so rapidly that the idea of drafting Vice President Joe Biden is popping up yet again.
Fox News has learned that a prominent backer of the "Draft Biden 2016" movement, Tulsa businessman Bill Bartmann, fired off an email Friday afternoon to several dozen Democratic allies musing about the possibility of reviving the push for Biden.
"I would urge all of you to join me in 'keeping our powder dry' until we see if for the good of the party and the country, we should resurrect (sic) the Draft Biden movement," Bartmann wrote to fellow Democrats who had been involved in trying to draft Biden last year.
"We cannot afford to lose the White House."
In his email, Bartmann specifically cited as an impetus for his concern a new national poll showing a steep dive for Clinton, who just barely beat Sanders in Iowa and now trails him by double digits here in New Hampshire...
Bartmann is the founder and CEO of CFS2, Inc., a consumer financial recovery company. He originally contributed to the Ready for Hillary PAC and then soured on Clinton, urging Biden to run.
"Instead of being Ready for Hillary, we're waiting for Joe," Bartmann told The Wall Street Journal back in October.
On Friday, Bartmann did not return a call and email seeking comment from Fox about his email.